RawDigger

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Hi all. I purchased RawDigger recently as it was discounted and i thought it would be beneficial to me. I really like how it displays any pixels that are under or over exposed in my raw files. However, the manual is very difficult to follow. unless you like complicated jargon and to me, meaningless numbers. The online videos are much worse...too much jargon and technical details. I wish there were tutorials that go through the program in simple English. Anyone else using this program?
 
Hi all. I purchased RawDigger recently as it was discounted and i thought it would be beneficial to me. I really like how it displays any pixels that are under or over exposed in my raw files. However, the manual is very difficult to follow. unless you like complicated jargon and to me, meaningless numbers. The online videos are much worse...too much jargon and technical details. I wish there were tutorials that go through the program in simple English. Anyone else using this program?

Can’t help you but I’m curious? What do you do with this software?
I took a quick look on their website but it looks like a ‘toolkit for developers’, not so much photogs?
 
If you look at the website you will find that there are different versions of the program. The basic one which I have provides details of your raw files, including underexposed/over exposed pixels, histograms and much more but understanding everything about the program is quite difficult (at least for me)
 
If you look at the website you will find that there are different versions of the program. The basic one which I have provides details of your raw files, including underexposed/over exposed pixels, histograms and much more but understanding everything about the program is quite difficult (at least for me)
Sound like you'd be a lot better off with FastRawViewer from the same developers (https://www.fastrawviewer.com/). It's designed for quick image browsing & culling and has all the same features you listed above: raw histograms, over/underexposure warnings, etc. Also tons more really useful culling features.

In contrast, RawDigger is way more oriented toward slow, methodical, scientific analysis of raw data from a single image.
 
I picked up Rawdigger research edition after reading this post to see if it can help improve my PP kills. I really like the EXIF window, which is phenomenally complete, right down to the focal point distance, DOF, LV, and shutter count. Virtually every camera setting is shown. I like the ability to see each individual color channel R,G,B,G2 and the min, max, avg and std dev for each channel as well as over and under exposure percentage by channel. I like that the pixel values go from 0-16384 reflecting the 14 bits per color channel in the raw file. The histograms use this range of values as well. I like the ability to get the statistics over the entire image or just in a small section of the image.

I am glad I bought it and it does help give me some guidance going into LRC or PS, but just having access to the granular raw data is pretty cool to me. It has also given me some insight into how I can improve my camera settings during a shoot, especially examining the LV, distance, and DOF numbers, exposure and dynamic range of my typical images. In short, it tells me a lot about why an image came out the way it did.
 
The articles and how to section on their website has a lot of interesting information, but there is a big learning curve and you really have to be into understanding the limits of your cameras raw files. One simple thing you can do is shoot a bright target, for example a well lit piece of white paper unfocused. Let the camera meter as usual and shoot, then raise exposure in subsequent shots taking notes about when blinkies first occur and when the histogram climbs the right wall. When you analyze in rawfigger you now know exactly many stops from metered it takes before you get clipping, exactly how far you can push a blinkie (or the highest nonblinkie) before losing highlights, how far you can push up the right wall of the histogram, and so on.
 
Sound like you'd be a lot better off with FastRawViewer from the same developers (https://www.fastrawviewer.com/). It's designed for quick image browsing & culling and has all the same features you listed above: raw histograms, over/underexposure warnings, etc. Also tons more really useful culling features.

In contrast, RawDigger is way more oriented toward slow, methodical, scientific analysis of raw data from a single image.

Your quick take is right on: FRV excels in culling and quick adjustments (it writes the edits into XMP side files which can be read in LR and ACR); with RD the raw histograms are much nicer and the data analysis features are more extensive. FRV does show the histogram of the JPEG previews that are embedded in the raw file, which is very nice if you do not have access to the camera histogram. Since these programs are reasonably priced, I bought both programs and would recommend that others do so as well. The manuals are excellent for the technically inclined.

Bill
 
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